


delilah

by Ias



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Guilt, M/M, Mental Breakdown, Post-Seine, Religious Imagery & Symbolism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-11
Updated: 2020-04-11
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:01:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23600494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ias/pseuds/Ias
Summary: And he said unto them, out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness.
Relationships: Javert/Jean Valjean
Comments: 11
Kudos: 61





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nuizlaziai](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nuizlaziai/gifts).



> Happy birthday, my dear compatriot! I'm so glad to have had another year with you, and am looking forward to many more. Thanks for being, quite simply, the best. I know we talked about this idea ages and ages ago--I hope you'll enjoy my interpretation <3

It was always quiet in the aftermath; and it was the quiet which he distrusted most. Plastered in the cool, not-yet-unpleasant weight of sweat-damp sheets, the clamor in his mind muffled as if under the weight of water—perhaps it should have alarmed him, that to lie in Valjean’s arms sent his mind drifting to the river. Or perhaps it was only a different sort of dying. 

They had not long finished in their lovemaking, and yet already Javert felt the weight of his hand on Valjean’s shoulder growing heavier, more insistent. His body was sated, and would be for some time; if he had ever been young, he was so no longer. Still he wanted. He wanted in the pit of his stomach and the pads of his fingers, in the roots of his teeth and hair. Every waking moment he wished to wrap himself tighter around Valjean’s body, to burrow into him with the possessive love of some mindless eating thing. 

“One of us ought to fetch a cloth.” 

Valjean mumbled the words against Javert’s chest, the speaking of them like a kiss. 

Javert snorted. “I suppose when you say  _ one of us _ , you do in fact mean me.” And he tightened his arms, anticipating Valjean’s reluctant attempt to rise; no power of his was enough to keep Valjean where he did not want to be, and almost immediately Valjean sank back against him with a sigh.

“I don’t mind,” he said, and if Javert had not been able to hear the smile in his voice he would still have felt it, pressed over his heart. 

“Hmph,” Javert said, “We must not fall asleep, or we will regret our lack of diligence in the morning.”

Valjean made a sleepy sound of agreement; in truth, Javert was in no such danger himself. Many nights he had lain awake long past the boundaries of true exhaustion, to savor the simple pleasure of feeling Valjean’s body against his own. Ridiculous, to think that his body could become a thing of such rampant hungers. He’d lived a life without the barest indulgence, or even the craving of it—well. Perhaps that was untrue. He had simply bottled such weaknesses over the long years of his life, and thus distilled them and made them stronger. 

It was more difficult to think of such thing as weakness, with Valjean’s fingers idling across the cooling damp on his shoulderblades. It tickled; not so much to be bothersome, but enough that Javert could not grow accustomed to their gentle, meditative passage. Likely he would not have gotten used to it one way or another. Certainly it was difficult not to focus on the air of Valjean’s breathing flicking over the hollow in his throat, as soft as a lover’s tongue. 

Not so long ago Javert would lie paralyzed in Valjean’s arms, unable to move and not wanting to pull away, until at last with a patient sigh Valjean would take pity on him and allow their bodies to separate. Slowly, like a shy horse being coaxed to take oats from a patient hand, Valjean had waited and coaxed and explained without words that his body could drink love through the skin like water poured over droughted earth; that he could reach, touch, hold, and even the force of his trembling could not knock askew his new foundations. Valjean had destroyed him, and then had the gall to help him rebuild; and Javert could not bring himself to doubt anything those strong hands had touched.

And so where once Javert found it impossible to do more than submit to Valjean’s loving touches, he now raised a hand to brush over Valjean’s shoulders, down to the nape of his neck. His fingers brushed the hard, pitted edge of the violent landscape carved into Valjean’s back. 

He did not flinch as he used to, on feeling the horror of those scars. On the first night when Valjean had bared his body to Javert’s eyes, the sight of them had banished any thought of lovemaking from Javert’s eyes. The river had risen in the dried bed of desire, and with its reek in his nose and its agony in his lungs Javert had wept over Valjean’s feet, insensate. In horror Valjean had fled the room, blaming of course himself. 

Javert almost returned to the banks of the Seine that night, but his life was no longer his to take. Instead he had moved back into his own apartment, and for weeks allowed only letters to pass between Valjean and himself—letters of increasing fervor and desperation, until at last Valjean appeared at his door to once again shatter his certainty that the two of them could never be together. 

These days, Valjean allowed Javert to touch his scars in the same way Javert had first allowed Valjean to touch every part of him: with a strained, desperate need that bordered on true agony. Javert wished to press his lips to every inch of ruination on Valjean’s flesh as one might kiss the rosary. And still he could not do so without tasting the filth of the Seine on his tongue. 

But tonight his fingers trailed upwards, not down, up into the luxurious softness of Valjean’s hair. The strands slid through Javert’s fingers like silk. As Javert pressed deeper to massage Valjean’s scalp, the weight on his chest shifted; Valjean sighed, a caress of breath, and turned his head farther into Javert’s touch. 

For a while they merely drifted; Javert’s fingers painting slow and gentle circles through Valjean’s hair, and Valjean’s body growing steadily more relaxed against his. It never ceased to amaze him, this sensation of Valjean falling asleep in his arms. The trust it required—trust Javert had not earned, and yet greedily took all the same. In moments such as this he could even forget his own unworthiness. That Valjean wanted him—that he could bring Valjean some small measure of happiness—that was all that mattered.

And then his fingers brushed something buried beneath Valjean’s hair. He stilled; slowly, carefully, his fingers followed a thin raised line that began on the side of his head and traveled a fingers’ span to Valjean’s ear. It was not alone; as Javert fanned his fingers through Valjean’s hair he could feel other raised marks, thin as leeches against the skull. Valjean’s body was no longer relaxed against his; the breaths which touched Javert’s throat now were shallower. 

Javert swallowed. He allowed his hand to drop from Valjean’s head, back to the nape of the neck where it could do no more harm. “Will you tell me?” 

For a long while Valjean was silent. Javert had learned better than to press him. He had broken himself on the reef of Valjean’s pain time and time again, bourne onto it by the relentless tides of the past—and that was just, that was right, but for the destruction such storms wrought on Valjean as well. 

And so Javert waited. He did not allow his fingers to continue their trek along the ugly lines which marked Valjean’s scalp. He stroked Valjean’s hair with the flat of his palm as if he might smooth everything beneath it away. 

“In Toulon,” Valjean said at last, and licked his lips. Javert could hear how dry they had become. Javert wanted to dampen them with his own, to shift until their bodies aligned and he could kiss that terrible word from Valjean’s mouth. But he did not; what lived on the tongue was born in the mind, and Javert could not reach it there. 

“They cut our hair short, to help with the lice,” Valjean said at last. He did not say,  _ do you remember?  _ “There were so many of us. Haste was more important than care.” 

The image came as swiftly as a hot poker branded through Javert’s eye: of Valjean chained and weeping, snarling, as the gaolor approached with a knife. The fistful of hair seized, hacked; the careless slip, the red flash against brown curls falling to the floor, the howl of agony—and the rasp of cut hair continuing beneath it all, for these were beasts, not men, and if they suffered slightly more than their State-allotted pain, surely neither the judges of man nor God would mind. 

He closed his eyes against the barrage, and the images became only clearer. Had he truly seen them? Was it memory or invention? No way of knowing. Surely he had seen dozens of men thus shorn, and there would have been no reason to note that one of them was Jean le Cric. 

Valjean could not see the rigid line of Javert’s mouth. This pain, this particular edge of it, was Javert’s alone to bear. Valjean had suffered enough without having to shoulder the weight of Javert’s pity and remorse. So instead he continued stroking, silent, until the body against his own began to relax. 

“Long healed,” Valjean said, and reached up to take Javert’s hand and pull it to his lips. Javert was not a man who could force his lips to smile. Instead he leaned in to press them to Valjean’s, chaste and as gentle as he was able; then he rose, his fingers sliding from the softness of Valjean’s hair and the horror the white cloud concealed, to make his way to the washstand and dampen a cloth for them both. 

* * *

Javert understood the principle of reading for pleasure, though only in the roughest theory. Reading the Bible for the sheer joy of doing so strained his limited imagination past the point of credulity. Though he went to church diligently, it was in the same way that he washed and dressed himself every day with scrupulous and unelaborate care: it was simply what was done by respectable people.

But Javert had witnessed many times how Valjean lost himself in the words of a sermon; how he bowed over the wisp-thin pages of the book in the evenings as if it were his bread and wine. 

And so when they would see themselves to Rue de Filles du Calvaire on the occasional afternoon when Monsieur Pontmercy was indisposed, Javert would watch as Valjean would settle on the settee with his daughter at his side and her daughter Jeanne—and oh, how Valjean had wept to hear that name!—on his knee, the Bible balanced on her tiny lap as Valjean recited from its pages. The heat was intolerable, even with the window open; Javert’s bound hair lay against the back of his neck like a lolling tongue, damp with sweat. There was nothing better to be done in weather like this than read, he supposed; at least it required no movement. 

“ _ And the angel of the Lord said unto Manoah, Though thou detain me, I will not eat of thy bread: and if thou wilt offer a burnt offering, thou must offer it unto the Lord. For Manoah knew not that he was an angel of the Lord… _ ” 

As Valjean read, Cosette nodded along. Though at first Javert watched her bowed head from the corner of his eyes suspicious for signs of sleep, she would occasionally raise a hand to stroke her daughter’s hair, or nod at one of the lines with a fond, reminiscing smile. He suspected that her child’s enthusiasm, at the very least, was less spiritual in nature; Javert suspected that the girl merely wanted to hear her grandfather’s voice. 

In that, were of the same mind. 

“ _ And he said unto them, out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness _ ,” Valjean recited; and then he looked up at Javert, and smiled a smile which was theirs alone. Ridiculously, Javert felt his cheeks heat even further in the oppressive atmosphere of the room; for though Jeanne’s head was bent over the book and Cosette’s bowed in thoughtful listening, it was as if the words Valjean spoke were not Scripture but rather sentiments they might speak in the dark, nearer to each other than any but God should ever know.

“... _ And they spake unto him, saying, No; but we will bind thee fast, and deliver thee into their hand: but surely we will not kill thee. And they bound him with two new cords, and brought him up from the rock _ …” 

The heat in the air was obscene, but Javert would not stoop to fanning himself. It was not so uncomfortable, when one did not have to move or speak or think. Valjean’s voice agitated the heavy air like a spoon slowly churning a thick pot of broth. Under ordinary circumstances Valjean was a fine reader, careful and clear, never rushing or losing his place. Now his voice was nearly hypnotic.

It was strange, to see the mechanisms of family at work. Looking at Jeanne in her grandfather’s lap, Javert could scarcely imagine what it would be like, to be so young and small and wholly taken care of. In some strange way, he was almost jealous of Cosette, who’d had nearly her entire lifetime to adore Valjean; Javert, old fool that he was, had squandered so many years on blind hatred and self-righteous madness. And yet he had been folded into this family as surely as if he had not spent the majority of his life a sinner, an unbeliever. 

_ “And Delilah said to Samson, Tell me, I pray thee, wherein thy great strength lieth, and wherewith thou mightest be bound to afflict thee. And Samson said unto her, If they bind me with seven green withs that were never dried, then shall I be weak, and be as another man.” _

Javert blinked his eyes open; he had not realized he had closed them until his head began to tilt. But Valjean’s eyes were on the page, Cosette’s cast down, and Jeanne—Jeanne herself was already asleep, her tawny head curled into the crook of Valjean’s neck. There was a smile now clinging to Valjean’s every word, honeying the betrayal they spoke of. 

_ “And Delilah said to Samson, Tell me, I pray thee, wherein thy great strength lieth, and wherewith thou mightest be bound to afflict thee. And Samson said unto her, If they bind me with seven green withs that were never dried, then shall I be weak, and be as another man.” _

There were none now to watch, and who should judge him if they did? He allowed his eyes to close. Should Valjean or his daughter look up to catch him dozing in his chair and think him a doddering old man, well, they would not be wholly wrong. The heat seemed to deepen the burgundy darkness behind his eyes, until he felt certain that if he were to open them it would be onto the depths of night. He did not open them; he was not certain he could. He was heavy, he was falling, and Valjean’s voice was falling with him as a comet fell with the night. 

_ “And Delilah said unto Samson, Behold, thou hast mocked me, and told me lies: now tell me, I pray thee, wherewith thou mightest be bound. And he said unto her, If they bind me fast with new ropes that never were occupied, then shall I be weak, and be as another man.” _

In the dark Javert could see their bedroom; he could feel Valjean in his arms.  _ Tell me wherewith thou mightest be bound.  _ He could feel the scars on Valjean’s head beneath his fingertips, an ugly line forty years unhealed.  _ If I be shaven, then my strength will go from me, and I shall become weak, and be like any other man. _ Deeper, deeper the darkness. Not of a moonlight bedroom but of a chamber with no windows at all, a place without sun or hope. The scars beneath his fingers were wet, wet and sticky and warm. The red darkness pulsed as if with sobs.

_ And she made him sleep upon her knees _ ,  _ and she called for a man, and she caused him to shave off the seven locks of his head; and she began to afflict him, and his strength went from him. _ The sawing of hair. The yelps of pain, unheeded.  _ But the Philistines took him, and put out his eyes, and brought him down to Gaza, and bound him with fetters of brass; and he did grind in the prison house.  _ Had he wielded the knife? He could feel it in his hand. The knife and the softness of Valjean’s hair as he sawed it away from the scalp, and the tufts which fell from his fingers onto the black void of stone were not brown but white, snow white, their ends splattered with blood.

Javert flailed out of the dream, his hand brushing something hot. The branding iron? He was on his feet, staggering.His hand was wet with warm blood, except it was not red; and the tea his hand had dashed from its cup was seeping into the carpet now, and Valjean and Cosette were staring up at him with mute shock.

“Monsieur, are you well?” Cosette said, her voice high with alarm, even as Valjean gently transferred the stirring Jeanne into her arms. And was that not the horrible clarity of it: that Valjean should be forced to set aside his sleeping grandchild and his beloved daughter, merely to tend to the anguish of his tormentor?

“Javert,” Valjean said, stepping forward to withdraw a handkerchief. He touched Javert’s hand with terrible care as he lifted it to wipe the drops of tea from it. “Were you burned?”

“No.” He licked his lips. “I was careless.” His tongue was thick; his voice not his own. “The heat—I am not feeling well.” 

“We ought to call a doctor.” Already Valjean was turning to make it so. Javert raised a hand to seize his arm before he had fully comprehended his words.

“ _ No _ .” He grimaced, and released the arm within his just as quickly. “I simply need air, and rest. I will make my way home.”

“I will go with you.”

“Jean,  _ please _ .” Perhaps there was something new in Javert’s voice, something raw, which caused Valjean to blink.”Your place is here,” Javert said, slowly and with an undeniable gravity. He allowed himself the indulgence of squeezing the hand which still clasped his; and then he pulled it away before Valjean could feel the trembles which even now were beginning. “Truly, I am fine,” he said.

He had never been much of a liar. But whether the river had cleansed him of that particular ailment or Valjean had simply decided to show him mercy, the man finally swallowed, and bobbed his white-haloed head in affirmation. “Very well,” he said. “But you will call yourself a cab?”

“I will,” Javert said, and turned to make his goodbyes.

But he did not call a cab. He accepted his hat and coat from the footman, too disturbed to feel his usual discomfort among the evidence of the Gillenormand’s wealth, and stepped onto the street without another word. On instinct, his feet took him towards home; his mind was too heavy to note the difference. The lingering dream swirled around his thoughts like a mist that would not dispel—and why should it? For it was as much memory as dream which trailed him through the heat-sagging streets of Paris, and he could remember such a thing, who was to say Valjean did not?

The heat ground the mind down like a millstone, made his legs weak even as they plodded him forward; there were others on the street, wraiths, ghosts, chains rattling at their ankles. He could smell the salt of the sea, the salt and putridity of unwashed men. His steps were as slow as one being led to the guillotine. When he passed by a reeking butchershop thick with a hive of flies, the smell conjured the crack of the lash, the rubies of blood dotting the sand—his lips pressing to the crevasses which marked Valjean’s sleeping back, as if he, a cog of the machine which put them there, had any right to grant him comfort. 

With a start, he found himself staggering against a gate: the one which led to Valjean’s garden, and the only home Javert had left. His long fingers curled around the dull heat of the metal as if to wrench it apart. He had crept into Valjean’s life like a spreading stain, into his home, his family, his bed. Cosette had accepted her father’s past the instant he’d found the strength to confess it; What would Cosette say to  _ him _ , if she knew what pain he had wrought upon her saintly father? Nothing he would not deserve, and likely far less than that. 

He was inside. He could not remember unlocking the gate or the door, and yet the heat of the house closed around him as if it had swallowed him. His hands trembled so badly he could scarce remove his hat and coat. His shirtsleeves clung to his arms, damp with sweat that the close air refuse to cool. He reached for his cravat to loosen it slightly, and found himself tearing it from his neck. His waistcoat came next, two buttons flying off to ping against the baseboard when his hands grew too weak and furious to prise them from their casings. If he were a beast, he may as well look the part. 

His stomach lurched and curled with nausea as he made his way up the stairs. The heat rose like an anguished wail as he reached their peak. He swayed, nearly tumbled backwards into the void behind him; stumbled forwards instead, unhappy creature, and thus inflicted his presence on the world yet longer. In the room which was Valjean’s and now also his own, he went to the washbasin and poured into it what ration of tepid water remained. It was as if he were splashing his face with sweat. 

The knife. The sobs. The dry, prickling scrape of dull metal sawing through hair, so deafening he nearly clapped his hands over his ears. The pain. The indignity. Nothing, nothing—it had meant nothing to him at all. What thought did the butcher have for the pain of a lamb?

He nearly retched into the porcelain. 

His hands fumbled for the edges of the washstand, steadying him; instead, one dislodged his shaving kit and knocked its contents on the floor. No matter. He barely heard the clatter. He whirled away. His hands flitted about his face like starlings hassling a crow. In his agitation, a strand of hair had come loose from his queue; it ghosted over his cheek, his lips, with every turn of his pacing. Like a fly buzzing about his face. He clawed it behind his ears, streaks of pain blooming where his nails had passed over his cheek. In a moment it had fallen loose again.

With a sound which was as much a snarl as a sob, he reached back to wrench his hair free from the cord he bound it with. He had intended to pull it back so tightly it would ache his skull, and another strand would not dare to escape. But as the loose, thick mass fell around his face and his fingers seized the strands in a grip hard enough to wrench them from his skull, it was another’s hair he gripped. 

His knees hit the floorboards hard, but the pain was distant beneath the immediacy of memory. His fingers remained buried in his hair as if trying to worm directly into his brain. He deserved to be punished, he knew that, had always known; and yet time and time again he permitted Valjean to convince him otherwise. That was weakness. An unwillingness to do what needed to be done. A fear of experiencing even a modicum of the suffering he had inflicted on Valjean himself. There was a keening in the air, but none in the house to hear it; and when Javert opened his bleary eyes to the wavering patch of floor before him, there was the razor from his shaving kit, as if laid there by God’s own hand. 

The fingers which lowered to close around it were steady, the metal beneath his palm as warm as something alive. His grip white-knuckled. The heat, the terrible heat. Something warm dripped on the back of his hand from his down-turned face and he could not say whether it was sweat or tears. Still he smelled the blood. Still the white hair, falling onto stone.  _ And Delilah saw that he had told her all his heart _ . The red behind his eyes was the red of blood. 

Javert raised the blade.


	2. Chapter 2

The gate swung open under Valjean’s touch as he returned home from visiting his daughter and grandchild. The sun had shown mercy at last, sinking like a deflated balloon behind a bank of low-lying clouds; evening was thickening into the hue of night, and the gate had been left unlocked.

A small frown touched Valjean’s brow. Javert had always been diligent about such things in the past. But he had looked quite ill, after the incident in the parlor; ill enough that Valjean had been gnawed by worry for the remainder of his stay with Cosette, thinking of Javert left to tend to himself alone. But Javert had grown irritated with him in the past for his “hovering”, and so Valjean had endeavored to give the man his space. Of course Valjean worried; he worried for everyone he loved. That did not mean he could make the day cooler, or the ex-inspector less stubborn.

When the door to the house itself opened without the resistance of a lock, however, Valjean’s worry developed an edge. As he stepped into the front hallway he saw no signs of a disturbance: there were Javert’s coat and hat, hung neatly on their pegs. Valjean removed his own, stepping forward to peer around the corner to the parlor in case Javert had taken to his favorite chair. The room was dark, and something scurried against Valjean’s boot. When he belt to pick it up, metal flashed against his fingers: a single button, trailing torn thread. 

Valjean hurried up the steps. His heart beat hard in his breast, the instincts honed over a lifetime of running assuring him that something was terribly wrong. A crumpled piece of fabric in the hallway outside the bedroom door confirmed the rising anxiety in Valjean’s breast: Javert’s waistcoat, forgotten on the floor and missing two buttons.

The door to the bedroom was locked.

“Javert?” Valjean leaned against the crack of the door, closed his eyes to the darkness of the hall, and listened. At first he heard nothing—the silence of sleep? But there, beneath the heavy quiet. The faint sound of something rocking, rhythmic; the rustle of clothing. 

“Javert please—are you well? Come, open the door.” But there was nothing; only a brief halt in the movement, and then, barely audible, a sound like an animal might make. Pained and trapped and wild. 

In the end, there was no decision, only action. Valjean gripped the handle of the door, laid his shoulder against it, and with a tensing of his prodigious strength, heard the lock splinter as it jolted open and he stumbled inside.

The blood he saw first, though there was not so much of it. Smears on the floor, on the sides of the ashen face and on the long fingers cover it like a cage, with only a white eye staring out sightlessly from between the fingers. For a moment, Valjean did not recognize him; a stranger knelt in the center of the room in a circle of dark tufts of hair, as still as stone but for his trembling.

And then, the world snapped into place. Valjean fell to his knees among the dark softness littered across the floor, and raised his hands to Javert’s face. He was speaking, though he knew not the words; could hear only the soft anguish as he placed his hands over Javert’s claw-like fingers, tried to prise them away from his scalp. It was only them that he noticed one was clenched around a handle—the straight razor, its blade kept wicked sharp and now a scant inch from Javert’s ear. 

“Javert, I am going to take that from your hand. Please let go. Javert, please.”

In the end, he needed to prise the fingers open, his other hand gripping Javert’s wrist so as prevent him from jerking it at the exact wrong moment. In the end the razor fell from Javert’s contorted fingers, hitting the floorboards with a clatter. Its edge was red with drying smears. Valjean’s hands moved up Javert’s arms, to his shoulder, his neck, a desperate and fumbling examination which revealed no further wounds. 

He gripped Javert’s head, allowing the panic to focus him, to guide his eyes and hands. He did not allow himself to contemplate what he was looking at, the black tufts hacked as close to the scalp as possible, and sometimes closer still: the red matts where the blade had drawn blood, wielded by a hand which cared nothing for the pain. None of the wounds seemed terribly deep. But they were terrible in an entirely separate way.

“Javert,” he said again, and gripped Javert’s wrists, futilely attempting to pull the hands from his face. They would not go, and Valjean would not force them. “Javert, please. In God’s name, I beg you. Please look at me.”

But he did not. He did not even appear to hear. And so Valjean did all he could do in that moment, which was also all the only thing he wished to: he wrapped his arms around Javert’s trembling body and held him for a span beyond time, stroking his hands down the sweat-soaked back of his shirt, until Javert’s tears wrenched free in earnest and the hands turned from his own face to grip Valjean like a man lost at sea. 

* * *

There was no question about calling a doctor, but there was an understandable hesitation. In the end, Valjean did not see that he had a choice. The examination was a cursory one; in the bed, Javert had not stirred since his wild sobs had quieted into a slumber so deep Valjean had not dared to wait until morning to have him seen to. 

The doctor, harried and limp as a sweat-damp handkerchief, had seemed grateful to be making a call after dark. He had hesitated only a moment on seeing the gashes on Javert’s scalp; had asked about the instrument which had been used to do the cutting, and proclaimed that no stitches would be necessary. 

“I have seen many such instances of temporary insanity in this dreadful heat,” the doctor said. “Especially in those with longer hair. I imagine the business for lady’s wigs will be bustling in the coming months.” 

Valjean rallied a weak smile. Even the doctor did not seem interested in acknowledging his own attempt at humor. 

The doctor turned to him, sobering. “Did he say anything to you, after you found him?”

“No,” Valjean lied. The words had been half-mad, nonsense: Biblical ravings, self-recriminations, a wild tirade of self-directed fury. He could still feel the tender crescents beneath his shirt where Javert’s nails had unknowingly dug into him. 

For a moment the doctor bent over a piece of paper. “I am concerned by the violence of the fit, but with the cause removed the symptoms should abate. Here is a prescription for a small amount of laudanum; I recommend keeping him as cool as you can manage, and being liberal with the dose should his temperament require it.” The doctor glanced at Javert again; his dark hair stuck out from the criss-cross of bandages, and with a twinge Valjean could not help but think of how Javert would hate to be seen in such a disheveled state. 

“Should the symptoms continue, you may wish to see a specialist,” the doctor finished, with a meaningful tilt of his head. The thought made a knot form in the back of Valjean’s throat; he paid the doctor far more than what was owed.

For a while afterward he stood staring down at Javert’s limp form in the bed, and allowed himself to see now as an aesthetic fact what until now his mind had grasped only in a series of necessary actions. The hair on Javert’s head had been hacked into hysterical, uneven clumps; the arcs of black dried blood which darkened beneath the strands made the patchy effect all the more unignorable. The face beneath it looked sunken, drawn, changed utterly by the clearcut of its frame. There were streaks of blood on the pillowcase; they alone looked red. 

Valjean looked, for as long as he was able. He then settled into the chair, opened the Bible on his knees, and settled in to wait. 

* * *

The night took its time in passing, and Valjean spent the long hours unsleeping. Even with the window open, the air which crept in past the sluggishly twitching curtains was tepid at best. Javert did not move, did not stir; if he had cried out or moved as if in a nightmare, Valjean was not certain he would be able to hold to his resolution of remaining by the side of the bed rather than within it. He ached to climb onto the mattress at Javert’s side, to wrap the man’s body in his arms and hold him until he woke. But he did not know what demons had driven Javert to such a state, and he could not be certain his presence would not inflame them further. 

And so he kept to his chair, though he could not prevent his hand from trekking across the smoothed sheets where Javert’s hand lay to twine their fingers together, lift them to his mouth and press the hard knuckles to his lips and brow. Normally an intolerably light sleeper, Javert did not so much as shift. 

There was nothing to do but wait, and that was what Valjean did, until the night outside the window began to dilute into a grey thin enough for the first strains of birdsong to pass through it. The candle had died, and for a long while Valjean had been sitting in darkness; he wondered whether to light a new one, or perhaps even to retrieve a plate of bread to keep on hand, and when his eyes wandered to Javert in the morning dimness he saw the glint of watchfulness staring back at him.

“Javert,” he croaked. His hand jerked, convulsively, towards Javert’s hand, before he could wrench it back into his own lap. Valjean wished to touch him, to feel his solidity, his warmth. He did not. Javert merely stared at him, his eyes as unreadable as an animal’s, without thought or intention or mind. 

There was something in that face that Valjean recognized. The shuttered anguish behind the eyes had been there after the Seine; it had been there when Javert had seen his scars, the moments of frenzy and anguish which had come over him like rogue waves from the past. But then the eyes closed; and when they opened again, they glittered not with the anticipation of the hunt but rather with tears of shame.

“Jean,” he said. His throat sounded dry, or perhaps just raw; he winced as soon as he spoke, raising a hand to touch his neck. Valjean had to restrain the urge to offer water, tea, anything which might make assuage it. He licked his lips, turned his head, winced; a hand raised to his head to over momentarily over a blood-tinged bandage before falling back to his side again. 

It was not often that Valjean thought of Javert as having an age; he was timeless as stone. Now he looked very old, and very frail. The dim light faded the harsh lines of his face not into the softness of youth, but rather the blurred darkness of a wraith. 

“How do you feel?” Valjean said, for he could not bear the silence.

Javert turned his head, no longer holding Valjean’s gaze. His eyes closed again; this time the hand that raised was not to his wounds, but his face. It draped over his eyes like a funeral pall, and the lines around his mouth deepend.

“Jean,” he said again, a ragged beginning which silenced itself a moment later. 

For a long while after, there was silence and stillness. Javert’s hand fell from his face, but the eyes remained fixed on the ceiling with an expression of focused anguish. It was not so different from the stupor which settled over him after Valjean had pulled the man’s sodden body from the Seine. He had moved through the raving of fever into a quietude Valjean liked even less than the sounds of Javert’s recriminations ringing off the close and whitewashed walls. For hours he would remain as an empty vessel, a blank slate; no words could stir him, nor Valjean’s hands on his shoulders, shaking him. 

When such a spell took the man it seemed as if he was summoning death into the room, as if he could will it into himself through a careful study of its attributes. Javert had lain thus for hours; surfaced unwillingly to the necessities of life; and then sunk, inevitably, back into that deathly stupor once more. He reminded Valjean of the greek myths: leased half to life and half to death. 

But in time, Javert lowered his hand, swiping away at whatever sign of weakness his eyes might have betrayed on his face. 

“I am better now.” Javert addressed this declaration to the ceiling; he seemed to have no interest in meeting Valjean’s gaze. It was only after some apparent inner struggle that his hand twitched on top of the blankets, and slid towards Valjean, palm-up, an offer or a request or both. Valjean seized it with ferocious relief, squeezing it far harder than he likely ought to. Javert’s eyes closed, and his fingers gripped back with equal desperation. 

“I had not meant for you to see me in such a state,” Javert said, when the silence grew too long and too coarse. 

In spite of himself, a weak smile tugged at a corner of Valjean’s lips. “I could hardly have failed to notice the effects.” 

A similar expression twitched Javert’s mouth, gone with equal speed. Valjean could not help but raise his eyes to the ragged fringe of hair now raised in pillow-missed tufts around Javert’s ears and brow. His work had been ugly, savage; the most skilled barber in Paris would have difficulty rectifying such a fright. The face which stared back at Valjean from within those tattered tufts of grey-streaked hair looked wholly different than the man who had sat across from Valjean in the parlor not a day before. 

“I had not intended to—to trouble you with this,” Javert began, haltingly. “I was not myself, was not thinking—ha. As if that were any excuse. How often have I heard those same words on the mouths of criminals, murderers?”

“You are not a murderer.”

“A murderer of spirits. Souls.”

Valjean squeezed his hand tighter. The conversation was taking a familiar turn, echoing their long nights spent locked in religious debate. “No man can destroy another’s soul.”

“No, but he might tarnish and warp it until there was little difference.”

“Not in the eyes of God.” 

“God’s judgments are mysterious to me. As are yours.” Javert pulled his hand away to wipe at his eyes again. “And here you are again,” he continued, as if each word was a poison which withered his tongue in the speaking. “At the bedside of a man you ought to abhor. I have tried to understand your mercy, Jean, I try every day; but there is a part of me which will never understand. The part which knows I will never deserve it myself.”

“You deserve mercy, Javert. Whether you believe it or not.”

“So you continue to say.” When he replaced his hand in Valjean’s it was damp with tears, and clutched him with bruising strength. 

“You ought to have pulled the temple down on my head,” Javert whispered, and it took Valjean a moment longer to realize what he spoke of . “That would have been a more fitting end.”

Valjean thought, for the first time since, of the night some days ago spent lying in Javert’s arms; of the fingers tracing over old scars beneath his hair. The pain and the understanding kindled as one as he looked on the ruin of Javert’s own hair. “You have never betrayed me, Javert,” he said softly. 

“Ha. Yes. For until now, there was nothing to betray. And now I have your trust, after the harm I have done and cannot help but continue to do, a serpent in your bed--”

Javert broke off with a choked noise, as if his own throat had closed like a fist around the words. The silence returned between them. Valjean could see Javert was building himself up to some terrible question or pronouncement, something it frightened him even to give voice; Valjean wanted to kiss him, to cry out for silence; but he remained silence, and allowed the hammer to fall. 

“Are we merely lying to ourselves, Jean? To think that we might ever know peace?” Javert’s hand trembled with the strength of his grip, with the force of his devotion. The tears in his voice were restrained only as far as the sails of a ship could claim to restrain to wind. “How far must we retrace the steps of the past before we might leave it behind? Must it be another forty years before the balance is paid?”

“Do not speak of such things,” Valjean said, the calm in his voice betrayed only by his iron grip on Javert’s hand. “You are not well, you need your rest--”

“No. No, Jean. My eyes are clear.” And then Javert smiled. It was a terrible smile, and not in the way that the man’s baring of teeth so like the snarl of an animal had been for as long as Valjean had known him. This was different. It was perhaps as close to gentleness as Valjean had ever seen on Javert’s face--the eyes blurred with tears, the agonized lilt of the lips. “Is it not possible that we have nothing left to give each other but pain?”

Javert’s words settled over him like a funeral pall. And yet Valjean did not reject them, not yet; he forced himself to face their implications, the idea that he and the man lying in his bed could simply never reconcile. That there was no shame in a failed attempt; that perhaps they had given each other what swallows of joy they had to offer, and all that remained now were the bitter dregs. 

And then, he shook his head.

“I do not believe that is the case,” he said. And unbelievably, he smiled; his grip on Javert’s hand softened. “And if it were, I would not care.”

Javert’s breath hissed through his teeth. His eyes blinked very fast. “Jean, you must not say such things for my benefit—”

“I am not.” Valjean’s other hand settled over their entwined ones. “It is only that I would prefer the pain of being with you to whatever I might feel without.” 

Javert made another noise. A sort of choked laugh, or perhaps a sob of disgust. “I am not certain I can believe such a reckless declaration.”

“If you believe one thing which I have ever asked of you, believe this.” 

The tears were sliding down Javert’s face unchecked now, dampening the pillow beneath his cheek. At last Valjean could bear it no longer. He stood, still holding Javert’s hand; without releasing it he climbed into the narrow margin between the edge of the bed and Javert himself, arranging himself with studied care until Javert’s face was before him and the warmth of their bodies could mingle through clothes and bedding. This close Valjean could see little of the ruin Javert had made of himself. He saw only the deep eyes, glazed with pain and love that were far too often one and the same. 

Perhaps it would always be so. But there were worse fates, Valjean reflected, than to suffer the agony of love; far worse indeed, when the cause was also the cure.


	3. Chapter 3

“I look an utter fool.” 

Javert stood before the mirror, scrutinizing his reflection—not an endeavor he had ever made a habit of, save to verify that his cravat was adequately tied and his hair respectably smoothed. He did not look respectable now. He looked like a dog with a virulent skin disease. At least the cuts had healed, but the overall effect was still one of haphazard wildness. 

There was no question that Javert would need a barber, but of course he refused to go. He knew it was likely foolishness, if not the worst kind of stubbornness, to avoid going anywhere that he might need to remove his hat. Valjean did not press him, though Javert knew well he should have.

In the mirror, Valjean’s face appeared at his shoulder, smiling softly at the ruin of his hair. “It is not so bad.”

“You must be ashamed to be seen with me.”

“Hardly.”

“You  _ ought _ to be, when your companion appears to be afflicted with mange.”

Valjean’s hand settled in the middle of his back, a warm and comforting pressure. Still Javert could not tear his eyes away from his own reflection. He was not a vain man—what aspect of himself could he have hoped to scrape up some vanity over?—but staring at himself in the mirror now, he had to wonder why Valjean would still wish to share his bed, every night these past weeks; why he would still think of kissing him, as he did now, his lips pressed to Javert’s shoulder through the fabric of his shirtsleeves, soft and blooming with warmth. 

“Perhaps I could help,” Valjean said quietly. 

Javert tensed, knowing that if Valjean were to offer to take him to a barber, he would at last concede. But instead, Valjean reached around Javert to the drawer of the wash stand, pulling it open and reaching inside to withdraw the delicate pair of scissors he used to trim his beard. These he lay wordlessly on the washstand before Javert’s eyes, and settled his hand on Javert’s arm with a comforting, steadying grip.

“I see,” Javert said, and cleared his throat. “Yes. I suppose that would be satisfactory.” 

Valjean had him sit, though he would have rather remained standing. As it was, his back remained as rigid as a baton as he sat stiffly in the chair Valjean provided; his hands on his knees were clenched into fists, his jaw set like a horse clenching the bit between its teeth. Valjean stood behind him, as necessity demanded; and yet it was unbearable, that Valjean might stand and scrutinize the ugly work he had inflicted on himself, look upon it not with the revulsion it deserved, but with love and with absolution.

From close to his ear, he heard the silken metal rasp of the scissors unclasping themselves. “May I touch you?” Valjean murmured; and surely Javert ought to be ashamed of the color that touched his cheeks, even in the depths of his spiritual mortification. 

“I suspect that will be necessary,” he said gruffly. Still Valjean waited, until at last he gave a jerk of ascension. A hand settled on his shoulder, squeezed, and then traveled up to the nape of his neck, and tested at the hairs there. Javert repressed a shiver. Even now he could feel the memory of pain, wisps of it clinging to him like stray hairs that could not be brushed away. Yet Valjean’s hands, as they moved through his hair, were so light that nothing could have escaped them. Javert knew he was feeling the scabs, could feel his mad and pathetic attempt at self-retribution in every mismatched tuft of hair. Yet for a while Valjean merely stroked him—like a favored pet, some withered part of him murmured. And yet the words did not torment him as they once might have. If he was to be a mere cur to lie by Valjean’s chair at night, then he would do so, and be honored by it. 

And then the snipping began. Little teasing tugs which resulted in a ticklish brush of hair down his neck, the chasing sweep of warm fingers moving it to the floor. Valjean’s fingers moved through his hair, straightening it, holding it as he cut; and Javert found his hands relaxing on his knees, his head falling forward beneath the gentle motions of Valjean’s hands. No thoughts of blood, no memory of pain. Only the two of them, and the quiet, and Valjean’s hands on him. 

“Ah—I believe that is as good as I am likely to get it.” 

Javert started as if he had been sleeping. And indeed, his eyes had been closed; he did not even see the hand Valjean proffered him until it was held directly below his eyes. He took it, bewildered; allowed himself to be helped upright, and led back to the window. The face which stared at him from the looking glass was not so different, too cruel in youth to chance at handsomeness and too grizzled now to make an active attempt. And yet he saw now himself as a thing Valjean had touched, shaped; how could beauty compare to that? 

“I hope it is satisfactory,” Valjean was saying, a trace of nervousness in his voice and face where it reflected, staring at Javert’s hard profile. “Of course, I have little experience—”

The image was no longer sufficient. Javert turned to cup that face in his hands, feeling the roughness of Valjean’s stubble, the hard planes of his jaw beneath. He stared down into Valjean’s face, held in his hands like something precious, unworthy of his touch. “You know that things may never be easy between us,” Javert said. 

Infuriatingly, Valjean smiled. And worst of all, the smile was genuine, warm, filled with that fondness Javert did not dare to name. “I know.”

Javert’s hand fluttered like a wounded bird between them, an aborted sweep of frustration. “And still you would prefer this.”

“I would.”

“You deserve ease. Happiness.”

“I am not certain what I deserve.” Valjean’s hand captured his, pressed it warmly. “I know, however, what I want.”

Javert kissed him. There was no helping the matter. Valjean was impossible, in both the emotional and the practical sense; he was an enigma, a saint, he was plausibly insane and certainly a fool, and Javert wanted him, he who had wanted nothing all his life. 

“Thank you,” he said, when at last they broke apart. There was nothing greater or more humble to be said than that. And Valjean smiled, understanding everything. 

“It’s only hair,” he said, his voice soft, and then allowed himself to be kissed again. 


End file.
